Clearing bugs with radar?

[Crayon Delicatessen]

Howdy,

May I please get some advice as to how I can expand my perimeter so that these bugs don't keep creeping in on my base? Nilaus has this supermassive grid in his videos, is there a special way of doing that?

Thank you!

[knighttemplar1960]

Radar just shows you where things are. It doesn't actually clear them. A radar reveals an area of 7×7 chunks (224×224 tiles), centered on the chunk the radar occupies. Then it scans a nearby chunk outside that 7x7 chunk radius inside a 29x29 chunk range every 33.333 seconds beginning with any unexplored chunks first. Once all chunks are explored the radar will continue to scan with the oldest scanned chunk being the next chunk to be re-scanned.

To actually clear while you reveal chunks use artillery. Each artillery shell that fires reveals the chunk(s) it travels through (each shell has its own radar built in) and will destroy any nest or worm inside its range that it targets.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965142422
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965142476
This will result in large retaliation waves that your regular defenses will have to handle
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965142522
This will result in a large area that gets cleared (and stays clear if you keep supplying the artillery with shells)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965142532
All the nests and worms in this area have been cleared in ~3 minutes. The red specks left over are bugs that grouped to form the retaliation waves that were revealed by the shells. Individual bugs are not targeted by artillery and behemoths are resistant to explosive damage. The area has been cleared and if you have radar along your walls those specks will eventually be revealed as cleared.

You can also use an artillery remote to fire a shell and reveal area outside (or inside) auto targeting range. Range in automatic mode is 224 tiles (7 chunks); in manual mode, 560 tiles (17.5 chunks). Infinite research is available to increase range, at +30% of base range per level, applied to both automatic and manual range.

[Ghevd]

Turret creep is my goto to removing biters and nests early game.

Throw down a row of turrents, add ammo, move forward, add another row of turrets and ammo, pick up back row and repeat.

Turrets and ammo are pretty cheap so build lots and go wild.

Later on I use a tank for funzies.

[JustSmile]

Simple early solution: scout out manually, identify water chokepoints and nests. Kill all biter bases inside your territory-to-be (best early way is to run in, spam a bunch of turrets around the nest and slap ammo inside by ctrl-drag). Afterwards set up perimeter walls on the chokepoints with turrets filled to the brim with ammo. Those should last without resupply until you get better, automated solutions. I recommend flamethrowers.

[Seth_Haveron]

Originally posted by JustSmile:

Simple early solution: scout out manually, identify water chokepoints and nests. Kill all biter bases inside your territory-to-be (best early way is to run in, spam a bunch of turrets around the nest and slap ammo inside by ctrl-drag). Afterwards set up perimeter walls on the chokepoints with turrets filled to the brim with ammo. Those should last without resupply until you get better, automated solutions. I recommend flamethrowers.

flamethrower suck big time.

slow , ineffective , expensive and difficult to set up next to the constant damage they take themself and cause to ones structures.

[IEATDIRT]

Originally posted by Seth_Haveron:

Originally posted by JustSmile:

Simple early solution: scout out manually, identify water chokepoints and nests. Kill all biter bases inside your territory-to-be (best early way is to run in, spam a bunch of turrets around the nest and slap ammo inside by ctrl-drag). Afterwards set up perimeter walls on the chokepoints with turrets filled to the brim with ammo. Those should last without resupply until you get better, automated solutions. I recommend flamethrowers.

flamethrower suck big time.

slow , ineffective , expensive and difficult to set up next to the constant damage they take themself and cause to ones structures.

Yeah but no type of biter has any resistance to fire (if i remember correctly dont quote me on that) so in the ultra late game where 99% of your biters are behemoths, flamethrowers are still useful for large attacks

[JustSmile]

Originally posted by Seth_Haveron:

Originally posted by JustSmile:

Simple early solution: scout out manually, identify water chokepoints and nests. Kill all biter bases inside your territory-to-be (best early way is to run in, spam a bunch of turrets around the nest and slap ammo inside by ctrl-drag). Afterwards set up perimeter walls on the chokepoints with turrets filled to the brim with ammo. Those should last without resupply until you get better, automated solutions. I recommend flamethrowers.

flamethrower suck big time.

slow , ineffective , expensive and difficult to set up next to the constant damage they take themself and cause to ones structures.

LMAO, of all the ♥♥♥♥ takes. A wall of flamethrowers using simple crude oil placed once per underground pipe length takes care of all biter aggression on deathworld settings in unmodded factorio. Add roboport coverage with some repair packs and pipes to fix up attrition and forget all about biters' existence, maybe double up on flamethrowers when behemoths come to use up fewer repair packs.

What in the world are you doing with flamethrowers for them to damage anything that's not a biter or an occasional bot, anyway? Walls are 100% fire resistant. Are you placing them inside your factory? Why are there biters inside your factory for them to shoot at? Oo

[AlexMBrennan]

Maybe they forgot to place the walls?

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Chronic Omega:

May I please get some advice as to how I can expand my perimeter

Have a blueprint with an artillery piece or two. Add some defenses for the artillery. Keep moving it up as it clears all the land in range.

[Vyndicu]

Originally posted by Chronic Omega:

Howdy,

May I please get some advice as to how I can expand my perimeter so that these bugs don't keep creeping in on my base? Nilaus has this supermassive grid in his videos, is there a special way of doing that?

Thank you!

I assume that you are relatively new to Factorio. I am going to give you a quick rundown on the pros/cons of the different turrets for Megabase and pushing outward for expansion.


Gun Turrets are good early-game but not as great as the other defensive turrets in mid-game to late-game. By the time you can build a huge megabase city block, you would be better off with other turret options.


Flamethrower turrets are great but require significant time to build a logistic network of either barrelled oil being carried to the wall or long-distance pipes. This can take a long time to push outward through the turret creep method.

I don't recommend using Flamethrower Turrets despite the advantages of using Flamethrower Turret unless you know for 99% certain that you will not move past this position.


Laser Turrets are very power-hungry but only require power wire at a minimum to clear out attack waves. This significantly reduces logistic needs to bare essential repair packs and replacement for destroyed items out to the defense wall and are far more portable logistic-wise than the other turrets.

This is the most straightforward wall you can pick up and move outward because it doesn't care where the power comes from as long there is a power source connected to the grid.


As others have previously said, Artillery turrets are great at clearing out distance biter nests without going there to destroy them. However, they can not hold against normal biters as they cannot shoot at mobile biters to kill them.

So it would be best to have another Turret to hold the defense wall against retaliating waves.



You can create a blueprint that automatically centers to the map's chunk.

A chunk, for reference, is 32 tiles by 32 tiles that you can view by opening the debug menu (F4) and tickle the "show-the-grid" to on under always tab. Alternatively, you can press F5 to toggle the grid view to on/off.

I recommend Nilaus's 2-year-old tutorial but still relevant video on how to create city/rail blocks for megabase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Qo9DUaoXY

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Vyndicu:

Flamethrower turrets are great but require significant time to build a logistic network of either barrelled oil being carried to the wall or long-distance pipes. This can take a long time to push outward through the turret creep method.

I don't recommend using Flamethrower Turrets despite the advantages of using Flamethrower Turret unless you know for 99% certain that you will not move past this position.

You're seriously going to advice a new player against using the strongest turret that can kill waves of behemoths with little effort and low tech because of some random idea you have about it requiring significant logistics?

All it needs is an oil access. You can usually find oil fields nearby and dragging a single pipe is as easy as holding left click while you drive out from the field to your wall in your car. It's no different from dragging a power line.

It's fine if you cripple yourself with your irrational hatred of flamethrowers, but don't go around tricking new players with that.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Seth_Haveron:

Originally posted by JustSmile:

Simple early solution: scout out manually, identify water chokepoints and nests. Kill all biter bases inside your territory-to-be (best early way is to run in, spam a bunch of turrets around the nest and slap ammo inside by ctrl-drag). Afterwards set up perimeter walls on the chokepoints with turrets filled to the brim with ammo. Those should last without resupply until you get better, automated solutions. I recommend flamethrowers.

flamethrower suck big time.

slow , ineffective , expensive and difficult to set up next to the constant damage they take themself and cause to ones structures.

Walls and gates are immune to fire damage, robots have a significant amount of resistance to fire damage (85%), bugs have no resistance to fire. No bug in the vanilla game survives ignition damage from flamethrower turrets.

With pre-space damage researches gun turrets kill the fastest (using the appropriate ammo) but have the shortest range. Flame thrower turrets kill the 2nd fastest, have the longest range and are the cheapest in regards to resources used to do damage. Laser turrets kill the slowest and have medium range, they can be made free to fire with enough solar panels and accumulators but are quite expensive to fire (and can cause power brownouts) if you are still using coal or solid fueled boilers and steam engines for power.

All turrets out range the longest ranged spitter. Creative use of walls and gates can make your base impregnable once you automate the delivery of supplies to your walls. Robots can repair any damage the walls take and replace any destroyed walls.

This set up will destroy even large retaliation waves.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965142522
With pre-space damage researches a wave this size will make it only to the 2nd to last set of wall hedges. The gun turrets will fire occasionally and the laser turrets will fire once or twice. Some wall blocks will get damaged and 1 or 2 might get destroyed.

When I have flamethrower damage research 9 against a wave of this size the laser turrets occasionally fire and the gun turrets rarely fire (if at all). Only a few wall blocks take damage and they rarely get destroyed. Flamethrower turrets are the work horse of your defenses. They do the heavy lifting. The other turrets just put on the finishing touches.

[Seth_Haveron]

nope they are not fire resistent ..... they get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up by everything they come in contact with and im tired to run constant repairs on walls and dragon teeth that should take the brunt upfront and not be destroyed by their own defences.

three bursts and a wall is done. the second wave is munching on the flamethrower short time after. they are good for about four waves then they need to be rebuild , drones get swated midair if they got cought in the stream.



and i am in a Death world scenario with 600%+ biters and co
so i wouldnt even think about to waste any drop of crude oil that is not used in fabrication.

also i got only one oil patch i can use.

my defences are 100% Laser turrets powerd by Solar and batterys
my whole system dosnt even flinch if they come creeping up at night.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Seth_Haveron:

nope they are not fire resistent ..... they get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up by everything they come in contact with

Not sure if you're referring to walls and gates or to the bots. The bots have a decent fire resistance, 85%, but with decent fire damage it don't matter since they only have 100 health to begin with. Even with no damage upgrades a bot hit by the flamethrower is dead in 6 sec., and there's nothing to put out the fire, so a hit is automatic death, even if delayed for a few seconds. As to the walls and gates, they are 100% fire resistant. They only have a 70% resistance to laser damage though, and their resistance to biter/spitter attacks is limited as well. That's why they get used in dragon teeth so often. If the pattern is good, which changes as the attacks get larger, the bugs go around them rather than attacking them, and that keeps them in range of your turrets longer before they get to the turrets. If they wall pattern isn't so good, they end up attacking the walls on their way to the turrets, and the walls don't stand up to such attacks for very long.

Originally posted by Seth_Haveron:

also i got only one oil patch i can use.

That is a super good reason to not use flamers. Having limited iron/copper is also a very good reason not to use gun turrets.
That's also why the "perfect" defense depends on more than just the damage it causes, or the damage it takes from attacks. Evolution, biter settings, resource availability, even space availability, all matter in what's best. Even then the best "now" could become worthless at later stages of the same game.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Vyndicu:

Flamethrower turrets are great but require significant time to build a logistic network of either barrelled oil being carried to the wall or long-distance pipes. This can take a long time to push outward through the turret creep method.

I don't recommend using Flamethrower Turrets despite the advantages of using Flamethrower Turret unless you know for 99% certain that you will not move past this position.

I've got to challenge this belief. The "logistics network" required to support a flamethrower wall consists of underground pipes and a pumpjack. Barrels on belts can be used, barrels in trains can be used, fluid wagon trains can be used. Even barrels carried by bots can be used. All are options available to the adventurous player. I'm not sure what you consider a long-distance pipe, but at the rate flamethrowers need oil I've had some pretty long-distance pipe supporting over 300 flamethrowers from a single pumpjack.

I also don't see what's wrong with moving the position of the wall just because there's flamethrowers involved. A wall covered by flamethrowers is going to have fewer turrets than one covered by lasers. And unless it's a single straight wall, any system of turrets will have fewer total parts than the wall itself. If moving 2 turrets and 3 pipes is too much work, surely moving 9 walls will be even worse.

Pushing outward with turret creep is going to be easier with anything other than lasers. Yes, they are power-hungry, but that's easy to handle just by adding more power generation - in any method - to the power grid. Until you're into post-space upgrades lasers take too long to kill the bugs. Gun turrets need to be filled with ammo, but that can be done with a quick ctrl+drag. (No point adding belts and everything cause they're going to be moved soon anyway.) Flamethrowers require the oil supply, but that can be laid in before the flamethrowers are placed, and they're instantly ready to fire. Flamethrowers also can take more damage then the other two: gun turret is 400 health, laser turret is 1000 health and flamethrower is 1400 health. Flamethrowers are also the only turret which out-ranges even the small worms, which also has no fire resistance, unlike the rest of the worms. It's a tie between the medium worm and flamethrowers, but the medium worm also has 50% fire resistance, so you're probably better off to try some other technique with anything other than small worms. Artillery can be good for that, and after doing the turret creep to attract and kill all the mobile units, there won't be any left to form a retaliation wave either.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Seth_Haveron:

and i am in a Death world scenario with 600%+ biters and co
so i wouldnt even think about to waste any drop of crude oil that is not used in fabrication.

Are you playing death world without flamers? You're either a pro for still surviving that challenge, or a liar.

The oil draw is absolutely minuscule, so if you are a pro you are somehow still ignorant. That doesn't match, so that points to you being a liar instead.

Originally posted by Seth_Haveron:

also i got only one oil patch i can use.

A pro would use flamers to boost their defense so that they can expand and claim more oil. In strategy games in general you should use your advantages to claim more resources and gain more advantage. You should not try to reduce your cost and defend in your little bunker. Eventually you'll get overrun. This is true for every strategy game I can think of, including factorio.